(4-4-12)
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
(King James Bible, John 8:32)
The talking cure
He couldn’t ride facing backwards on trains or pee in a public restroom; he concluded that all little boys desired sexual intercourse with their mothers, all little girls envied men their penises, and all of us were latent homosexuals (although none of this meant quite what our everyday understanding suggested). In the noblest achievements of mankind he saw the influence of primitive and bestial motivations, and in our saddest and basest moments signs of a instinct for death and oblivion; he saw neuroses and some psychosis as the price we had to pay for civilization and freedom from wanton slaughter, and little hope for the majority of humankind ever achieving much real freedom from or even understanding of the true forces which propelled their actions. He propounded ideas that others found outrageous and offensive, refused to back down from his beliefs to the authorities of his career and station, and endured rejection by the medical community he sought to make a place in. He desired to achieve intellectual discovery in a time and place where a Jew could be a good physician but probably not an accepted university professor. He probably has had more impact on psychology, psychiatry, the social sciences, interpretation of art/history/culture, and on Western popular culture than any other single historical figure. Our modern language, ideas, and sensibilities are littered with hundreds, possibly thousands of concepts which trace back—often without recognition—to his theories and practice. He was Sigmund Freud.
Why talk about Freud in a course on counseling children?
“Extending the methods of Breuer, Janet, Benedikt, and others, Freud was developing a socially acceptable way for doctors to spend time with patients and engage their predicaments.”
(Kramer, 2006, p. 52)
“Having opened a new perspective on the human mind, and most especially on human limitations, Freud and Jung were preforce the first thinkers to live with that particaularly intense burden of self-reflection that distinguishes the psychology of modern man. They were, in that sense, the first citzens of the twentieth century.”
(Kerr, 1993, p. 4)
Freud’s insights
In treating presenting psychological disorders of late 19th century, upper class, Europe–Dr. Freud was confronted with confusing clinical problems which defied physical explanation: vague and shifting patterns of physical and mental symptoms, odd actions toward him and his treatment efforts; sometimes dramatic improvements in response to catharsis, suggestion, or hypnosis which would fade over time or be followed by the appearance of new symptoms. By virtue of careful observations, disciplined introspection, and careful logic Dr. Freud developed theories which seem to account for all that could be seen and achieved:
- all behavior is adaptive
- all behavior is purposeful
- all behavior is determined
- the adaptation/purpose/determinants reflects forces outside our awareness
- reflects early influences
- protects us from nonrational anxiety
- birth trauma serves as a template of anxiety; signal anxiety elicits protective efforts (defenses, symptoms, resistance)
- instinctual drives lead to the emergence of thoughts, cathexis (attachments), [mental] objects [i.e.: relational introjects]
- The origin of mind reflected our earliest efforts to satisfy instinctual needs; the elaboration of mental activity grew out of a desperate efforts to escape the terror of threatened loss of mind; the emerging balance of forces reflect our basic nature
- unconscious, preconscious, conscious
- Cognitive processes develop out of the organism’s need to cope with frustration of basic drives
- primary processes/the Id — pleasure principle
- The origin of thought is in the temporary gratification of a need by hallucinatory imagery.
- secondary processes (reality testing)/the Ego — reality principle
- Because primary processing thinking is not really satisfying (or not as satisfying as actual gratification), the individual begins to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and a new kind of thinking begins.
- tertiary processes/the Superego — internalized social imperatives
- Because of the supreme importance of the caretakers in achieving gratification, the child’s perceptions of their desires/values/threats/demands are internalized and begin to act as yet another set of cognitive processes. Because this occurs at a relatively early age, the moral judgments of the Superego are “childlike”: rigid, absolute, and unreasonable; and often operate outside our awareness.
- defense mechanisms
- primary processes/the Id — pleasure principle
- psychosexual development: stages, fixations, regression
- symptoms, transference, how the “talking cure” works
- transference neurosis as a time machine
- insight, working through, [corrective emotional experience, more mature defense mechanisms]
- countertransference, symptom substitution, flights into health
- the fruits of his effort
- the orthodox, the heretics, the neofreudians
- Anna, the ego, and the mechanisms of defense
- Bolby, attachment theory
- object relations, new psychotherapies, innovation
- Rogers, Perls, Wolpe, Eysenck, Beck, Patterson: the ground from which they grew
- neuropsychology and neuroscience
- the enduring influences
- the limits of rationality
- the limits of self-awareness
- the complexity of the human experience
- the critical importance of motivation to understanding and influencing human action, adjustment, improvement
Balance
For an interesting and revealing discussion of Freud, his work, and the consistency of his own intellectual and scientific behavior–see Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind by Peter D. Kramer
An illuminating discussion of one of men responsible from bring psychoanalysis to the English speaking world is found in: Freud’s Wizard: Ernest Jones and the transformation of psychoanalysis by Brenda Maddox